Tension on a team can be critical at best and fatal at worst. The purpose of a team is to work together for a common goal. A leader must constantly work at balancing his team and working through conflicts to turn them into victories.
Check out my recent guest post “Tug and Not War- Tension on a Team” at Partnersforthegospel.com. This is a 3-part series.
An Optimist
In an earlier post, we talked about a PESSIMIST. In this post we will look at an OPTIMIST. They differ in many ways, mainly their outlook on life. One illustration of this is listening to the weather. When the Meteorologist gives the forecast, two different things are heard. The pessimist hears that there will be a 30% chance of rain. The optimist hears that there is a 70% chance of sunshine. Again, both are correct, but neither is complete.
I am using definitions from www.dictionary.com to illustrate the differences between being a pessimist, optimist, or realist.
By definition, optimism is “The tendency to expect the best and see the best in all things.” It is “the belief that good ultimately predominates over evil in the world.” Obviously, it is good to have optimism, but it must be kept in check or it can get out of hand.
In this post I would like to give some things for an optimist to consider.
1- On Optimist tends to overlook the facts for the outcome. An optimist is usually a visionary; one who inspires or motivates others. The problem is that an optimist usually only looks at the end result. Listen to your conscience. Don’t overlook facts that tell you to make another decision or slow down.
2- On Optimist needs to have someone help them count the cost. An optimist is wise to have someone trustworthy to evaluate them. The means do not always justify the end. Think things like: what are the ramifications of what I would like to do? Who will this affect? How much will it cost? When is the right time?
3- On Optimist should not confuse confidence with competence. Judgment oftentimes is blurred by desire. As a boy, I had a friend who convinced me I could fly. We got on the roof of his one-story house with a towel for a cape, and jumped. It took less than a second to realize my confidence far out-weighed my competence. I’m thankful he didn’t live in a two-story house.
Just because you have a great idea, does not mean: it is the best idea; that it is time for this idea; that this idea will be beneficial; or that it will actually work. On the other hand, your optimistic idea may be ready to move forward. If so, do not let the pessimist talk you out of it.
“A pessimist see the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” – Winston Churchill
The hardest part of day-to-day life is keeping on track and prioritized. In much of our life we major on the minors, and minor on the majors. We start out with good intentions. We are aimed in the right direction, but for some reason we get off track. Imagine an airplane leaving Atlanta headed to Paris. The headings are set and the flight plan is filed. The plane leaves Atlanta but somewhere over the ocean the pilot decides to change his heading by two degrees. That may not be much in the beginning, but it will drastically change the destination. When we blur the lines of things in our life we soon get off course, ever so slightly, until ultimately it changes our destination.
It is easy to blur the lines between:
1- Low & High Priority – Time management knowing what it most important and accomplishing it first. When we spend quality time on things that are low priority we quickly move off course.
2- Direction & Vision – Just because you are going somewhere does not mean you are headed in the right direction. Vision keeps you focused on the goal.
3- Speed & Pace – We often equate movement with achievement. Just because you are busy, it does not mean you are accomplishing a task. Pacing yourself means you are intentionally working toward a goal.
4- Personality & Character – We commonly mistake someone’s likeability with character, but that could be far from the truth. Character is not what someone says or how much you may like them. Character speaks of who they are no matter what kind of personality they may have.
Blurring the lines gives a false impression or a bias toward the important things in life.
I’m not very big on “love at first sight”. I’m not saying it never happens, but when it does it is not the way Hollywood portrays it. Love is an acquired emotion that takes time and effort. It doesn’t just “happen”. On the flip side, I am not at all in agreement with the statement, “we just fell out of love.” In my opinion, you love who you want to love. You don’t fall “into” or “out of” love. Rather you make a decision “to love” or “not to love” someone. Usually the reason a spouse feels that he/she has fallen out of love is because they have allowed someone else to step into that role in their life.
When you see your spouse in a brand new light, you will cultivate the love in your relationship. In the first post, I offered the first three check points. Now let’s look at three more.
4- Give instead of take. Selfishness is part of our human nature. We have been taught to look out for number one. When in a relationship, that kind of thinking must be reversed. Try one week of meeting the needs of your spouse before your own needs are met. See if they don’t reciprocate.
5- Build instead of tear down. I’m the master of “cut-down”. That means I can be hyper-critical and even mean without meaning to do so. Never forget that when you speak a word, it can never be taken back. Tearing your spouse down does not make you look better. It makes you harder to love. When you build up your spouse, you are in reality building your relationship.
6- Make them a priority, not an option in your life. After years in a relationship, a spouse may become part of the furniture. You know they will be there. There may not be a lot of love, just two people living in the same home. When children arrive they often get more attention than your spouse. If you want happy children, show them loving parents. Teach them that your spouse gets priority. They will love you for it, but so will your spouse!
This is not an exhaustive list. It is simply six things to make you think. Would you like to leave me a comment and add to the list?
If you are married, you should remember the first date. Hopefully remember the excitement of first getting to know each other…and falling deeper in love. After you married, you began the real journey of learning each other in a brand new light. You learned the likes and dislikes. You learned their strengths, stresses, and their habits (good or bad). At first these things are “cute” or “just part of who they are.” After some time these things are not as enduring as they were in the beginning. This is where trouble often starts. They honeymoon has worn off. The wedding gifts are all in use. The cars are breaking down. The rent is due. Soon there is the pitter-patter of little feet. Then…there is that budget thing. At the end of the day you are tired and your spouse becomes a room-mate instead of the love of our life.
When you begin to look at your spouse this way, you need a check-up to bring you to reality. You need to view your spouse in a brand new light. Below are three thoughts I would like to offer. In the next post I will offer three more.
1- Analyze yourself before you analyze your spouse. We usually do not see ourselves in a true light. Being critical of our spouse is a self-absorbed way of taking the light off of us and placing it on someone else. Before you see their physical or emotional imperfections, take a look in the mirror. It might surprise you.
2- Don’t compare them to someone else. When you are using someone else as a comparison, you are assuming you know everything about them. We only see the “outside” of people. We only know the “surface” of someone. You do not know the “real” person until you live with them and become part of their lives. We are all unique and special in some way. See your spouse as a gift from God to you.
3- Start where you are, not where you have been. Every relationship goes through mountaintop and valley experiences. No one is perfect. If you and your spouse really want to have an awesome relationship, start where you are today. Offer forgiveness based on accountability, and start building where you are today. The past will do nothing but destroy you if you let it.
Do you have something to add?
Read tomorrow for Part 2
When a child gets into trouble in life there are plenty of reasons and people who get blamed. Certainly the child has a mind of his own and has to eventually make his own decisions. As I see it we often forget about all the missed opportunities to mold him throughout his life. As I stated in my first part of this series, you cannot wait until a child becomes a teenager to get serious about his direction and training.
“Give me your four year olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.”
— Vladimir Lenin. We understand that we must teach early and often if we want to instill the right character into a child.
In the first post I shared the first two principles you will find in successful parents. You should be: Teaching Authority and Modeling Respect. Now let us look at the other three.
3- You should be MAINTAINING DISCIPLINE –
I do not meet many people who like undisciplined children as long as you are not talking about their children. When they see how other children act they feel like someone needs to train them better. At the same time they are blind-sighted about their own children. Discipline does not begin with the big things; it begins with the small things. The hard part is consistency. Most parents “wear down” too easily. We never moved the breakables from our house. Instead we taught the children what to touch and what not to touch, (over and over again), with discipline. Finally they learned. Discipline must change with each stage of life. Always be fair, but never quit. Soon it will pay great dividends.
4- You should be DISPLAYING PRIORITIES –
Believe it or not, your children really are following your life. Your habits and priorities will one day become theirs. The way you handle finances will teach them how to handle them. Your work ethic teaches them a work ethic. How you treat others will be the basis of how they treat others. This is not popular today, but it works. I place my spouse above my children. She gets priority over them. The way to love your children is to love their dad or mom. Remember you are teaching them the priorities that they will one day have in their relationships. At my life stage, we are entering the “Empty Nest” syndrome. As the children move out, I am glad I made my spouse a priority because we are not strangers.
5- You should be EXPECTING MATURITY –
At every age there is a level of maturity you should expect. An infant may cry when he doesn’t get his way, but an adolescent should not. Teach your children how to make decisions and at each stage in life allow them to make some. They get more difficult as they move through the stages, but in the end, they know how to make them for themselves. There comes a time when they need to pay their bills, go to work, finish projects, and take responsibility for their lives. They will not know what to do if this is the first decisions they have been made to make. As you release them, you become more free yourself, (and that’s a good thing)!
As parents we need to step up to plate and stop shirking responsibility. The next generation needs us badly, and one day we will need them just as bad.
I am writing a 2 part series on parenting. I am not an expert by any means. I do not claim to be the example. I have made many mistakes, but I have learned from them. I have been in the ministry thirty years, and I have been a parent over twenty-five years. I have been the Founder and Superintendent of a Christian school for over twelve years. That may not make me an expert, but it does make me experienced. I have been involved in almost every type of situation you could imagine with parents and children.
I want to preface what I am about to say with a few statements. There are exceptions to every rule. There are times when the normal rules may not apply. As a parent, you may be doing all you know how to do, but it is simply not working. You may need some special intervention and help with your situation. With all of that said though, I want to discuss the biggest problem I see with children today….the parents. Most children would be fine if they had consistent training and leadership from their parents.
I would like to share two posts giving you a total of five principles I believe you will find in successful parents.
1- You should be TEACHING AUTHORITY –
I grew up learning to say “yes mam” and “no mam”. I believe it is still appropriate today. There should be an understanding with children that they honor those in authority. As a Police Chaplain I have witnessed many situations where children and teenagers have a complete disregard for authority. Many of the parents do all they can to help the children avoid taking responsibility for their actions. They teach the children to “beat the system”. This is setting the child up for a big fall. Everyone has authority. To be successful in life you will have to submit to an authority. Of course, I believe ultimately we have to submit to the authority of God. When a child has the proper relationship with God they will have no problem with other authority in their life.
2- You should be MODELING RESPECT –
You cannot mandate this when they are teenagers. You must start it when they are toddlers. If they are taught to respect their teachers and parents when they are young, they will respect them when they are older. As a parent, we have a responsibility to respect our elders and authority, thus teaching our children. If I want my son to respect women, I need to teach him to respect his mother. If my daughter is to respect her husband one day, it will start by her mom’s respect for me. This is not having an ego or trying to dominate a child. It is simply teaching them how to become good adults one day. If they learn to respect their teachers, they will one day respect their boss. It is a chain reaction that a parent must start.
Getting an organization on the same page and heading in the same direction is a larger task than one might imagine. There are various personalities and even personal agendas at stake. Emerging from the crowd should be a leader with vision and clarity. This is not an easy task to carry out but whoever said leadership was easy? Taking the bold steps to bring vision to an organization will make the difference in whether it will move forward or die. This is painful in the beginning but awesome when accomplished.
Organizational vision is:
1- Contemplative – Real vision cannot be “conjured” up or pulled together flippantly. There must be thought and preparation. This comes from looking at the possibilities through the lens of an open mind. A leader cannot be selfish or single-minded. Looking at things from various perspectives gives a broader view of potential.
2- Comparative – An organizational vision must be unique to the particular organization. There is not a one-size-fits-all vision out there. With that said though, a real leader will learn as much as possible about the vision of other organizations. This allows a learning curve from the success and failure of others. That is much less painful and less expensive than learning for oneself. Take the good and the usable information and plug those components into the vision that is beginning to form for your own organization.
3- Complex – Not only is organizational vision not easy to develop, it is not easy to implement. The reasons are many, it hinges on the people and personalities involved. A team is usually made up of a mixture of personality traits. This is good, and what makes a team work, but it can also stall out the planning of vision. Everyone sees vision through their own eyes. This is where the leader must become creative. After analyzing the vision DNA of each team member, the leader will then be equipped to take parts of each person and weave them into the vision of the organization. This allows each team member to feel validated and gives them a “buy-in” to the overall vision.
4- Corrective – You cannot have a staff meeting in a conference room or at a leadership retreat and create a “once and done” vision for your organization. You may define the direction, the purpose, and even the means to get there, but you cannot plan for the deviations that the organization may face. When you understand where you want the organization to end up, you have to stay focused on it. When things get off track to the left or right, don’t fret, simply get your eyes back on the big picture and make the necessary corrections to move toward the finish line. Looking at the end again, will help you to correct your current course and get everything back on track.
When an organization knows where it is going, and has a leader capable and ready to take them there, the sky is the limit.
We have all known people who we wondered how they made it in life. They are not like us, and we don’t understand them. We look at them and shake our heads. We wonder why they cannot see themselves as others see them. Whether we admit or not, we may be one of “those” people as well. We all have our “moments” where we seem to live outside of our normal character, but that should not be the norm. When dealing with the public we are constantly made aware of the various types of people in the world and how they react to one another. I would like to mention a few types of people who make the world go around.
1- The Overly-aggressive – We call these people “pushy”. No matter where they are, no matter what is going on, no matter who they have to step on, they are going to have their way. On a plane, they are the ones getting luggage out of the overhead bins and heading down the aisles before the wheels touch down. They can’t wait in line at a store, or be put on hold during a call. They want their fast-food, faster. Many times they do not realize how abrasive they are to others, and sometimes they simply don’t care.
2- The Self-absorbed – These people think that the world revolves around them. They always assume that when people are talking, it is about them. They cannot imagine why you would not want to be around them all the time. Their life is the center of everyone’s universe, so they think. They will always get offended when you do not consider their feelings and opinions first.
3- The Emotional-Enabler – An enabler operates purely out of emotions and feelings. When this person is in authority, they tend to allow certain people to break the rules while holding others overly accountable. By allowing someone to be less than what they should be, the enabler is actually hurting that person and not helping them. An enabler thinks they are a good support system, when in fact; they are doing more harm than good.
4- The Self-Proclaimed Victim – In an effort not to offend, they allow others to offend them instead. By playing the victim they can excuse their own lack of success and opportunity. Everyone is always out to get them. They never get the breaks that others do. They live in a self-defeated world and never seem to grow through their circumstances. As one person said, “Remember, sometimes you are the pigeon, and sometimes you are the statue.” Get on with life. It’s not all bad.
5- The Well-Balanced Personality - Certainly, none of us are superman but we are all super in certain areas. While none of us may be a “10” in everything, we can be a “10” in something. To be well-balanced means you operate in your strengths and learn thru your stresses and weaknesses. You are in a constant state of re-adjusting yourself as you learn and grow. This person seems to succeed more often than fail because they are always learning and never quitting. They look at some of the people previously mentioned and just shake their head and say, “What in the world are they thinking”?
This is not an exhaustive list. Can you name “some other people”?
God Bless America! Spend time today praying for our country and our leaders. Thank a veteran for their service to our country
I would be honored if you would like to SUBSCRIBE to RodneyAgan.com. You can receive it by RSS Feed or email. You can sign up in the navigation bar at the top right of this page.
